Con­cert pro­mot­er and mu­sic writer Nigel Camp­bell has called for a new fo­cus to­wards own­er­ship of pod­cast­ing and stream­ing rights, and even a manda­to­ry reg­is­tra­tion of copy­rights. His sug­ges­tion comes as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has de­stroyed the live mu­sic in­dus­try.

Camp­bell said a ma­jor flaw is the lack of an in­dus­try ad­vo­ca­cy unit with or­gan­i­sa­tions like TU­CO, Pan Trin­ba­go and COTT not con­sid­ered ef­fec­tive in­ter­locu­tors with Gov­ern­ment on trade is­sues.

Adding her views to the top­ic, Fan­ta Punch, Part­ner, Head, In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty at law firm M. Hamel-Smith & Co. ac­knowl­edged that copy­right own­ers face se­ri­ous chal­lenges in pro­tect­ing their copy­right. She said, “The sale and dis­tri­b­u­tion of pi­rat­ed goods al­so con­tributes to mon­ey laun­der­ing and il­lic­it trade ac­tiv­i­ties.

Our copy­right law does not dis­tin­guish be­tween copy­right in­fringe­ment and pira­cy specif­i­cal­ly, but it does set out both civ­il and crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty for the in­fringe­ment of copy­right.”

The il­lic­it trade in mu­sic known as pira­cy and copy­right in­fringe­ment, is the ex­ploita­tion of an­oth­er per­son’s mu­si­cal cre­ation via re­pro­duc­tion and du­pli­ca­tion for boot­leg sale, unau­tho­rized sam­pling for a new mu­si­cal work, or dis­tri­b­u­tion or un­li­censed use in an en­vi­ron­ment where mon­ey will be ex­changed.

The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try En­ter­tain­ment In­dus­try Sur­vey has placed the val­ue of the in­dus­try’s con­tri­bu­tion to the T&T econ­o­my at TT$169M, and WIPO es­ti­mat­ed the in­dus­try’s val­ue based on do­mes­tic and re­gion­al mar­ket trends and evo­lu­tion at $43M in 2007, and in 2011 at $49M.

Camp­bell be­lieves there are suf­fi­cient laws to pre­vent pira­cy and copy­right in­fringe­ment but it has not been used enough due to the un­will­ing­ness of lo­cal cre­ators to en­gage in con­vo­lut­ed le­gal bat­tles and due to the non-recog­ni­tion of the val­ue of their in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, “Fur­ther, T&T has nev­er used the WTO trade dis­pute mech­a­nism to set­tle any claims.

We are at a dis­ad­van­tage in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, and lo­cal­ly, we are stymied by too many reg­u­la­tions.”

In seek­ing re­dress for in­fringe­ment, Punch stat­ed, the copy­right own­er can bring civ­il pro­ceed­ings against an in­fringer which if suc­cess­ful could in­clude in­junc­tive re­lief, seizure or de­struc­tion of the in­fring­ing works, dam­ages or an ac­count of an in­fringer’s prof­its. She posit­ed, “Where crim­i­nal sanc­tions are brought, the guilty par­ty may be held crim­i­nal­ly li­able for copy­right in­fringe­ment for prof­it-mak­ing pur­pos­es and de­pend­ing on the sever­i­ty of the of­fence, penal­ties or im­pris­on­ment may ap­ply.”